Why do we believe what we believe?

[duszek]

Unbelief: human beings and apes have common ancestors.
Claim: Human beings and apes both love bananas.

I assess the truth of the Claim and say: yes, that is true.
This assessment results in Belief: human beings and apes do have common ancestors.

Is this new Belief a Product of the assessment of the Claim ?
Or a mere Result ?

I would say that your belief in the 'Claim' preceded your assessment of its truth.

And the new 'Belief' is an inference from the first belief.

So neither belief was the product of an assessment of truth.

This is one possibility, yes.

But another one is that it never occurred to me before that apes and human beings loved bananas. Only when the speaker pointed this out to me I thought about it and decided that yes, it was true. And that the inference also was true.

So in this case both the Claim and the Belief resulted from an assessment of the truth of the Claim.
Don ´t you think ?

[derrick.farnell]

I think I understand you now. To be the product of assessing the truth of a claim, a belief must occur AFTER this process has concluded. As the conclusion depends on the formation of the belief, the belief canot therefore be a product of this process. A process P may be a chain of events but none of these events can be causued by or a consequence of P.

Thanks - I may not have noticed this lack of clarity if you hadn't mentioned it.

This does seem perfectly sound but to avoid confusion you may want to consider the following interpretational issues when clarifying your case:

1) The process of assessing the truth of a claim is an intentional process with some anticipated steps that flow from the acting on this intention. This may explain why it seems natural to claim belief as a result of this process.

2) Assessement V Assessing. The death of Caesar may not strictly be a causal consequence of his murder, but it could conceivably be considered a consequence of the process of Brutus murdering him.

2) Event V State of affairs. The acquisition of a belief may be an event that cannot be caused by the assessment of truth but it is certainly a persisting state of mind that is a consequence of that process. The occupation of Berlin was an event in WW2 but it was also a persisting state of affairs that was a consequence of WW2.

Thanks - I follow your points. I'll give them consideration when I next go through the article.

[derrick.farnell]

This is one possibility, yes.

But another one is that it never occurred to me before that apes and human beings loved bananas. Only when the speaker pointed this out to me I thought about it and decided that yes, it was true. And that the inference also was true.

So in this case both the Claim and the Belief resulted from an assessment of the truth of the Claim.
Don ´t you think ?

But I would say that this isn't a possibility, because assessing that X is true is dependent on first believing X:


The content of any belief is a claim, whether it’s something profound, like ‘There’s an afterlife’, or something mundane, like ‘Today is Monday’.

To conclude that a claim is true is to conclude that it agrees with reality.

However, in order to assess whether a claim agrees with reality we must first have an understanding of the relevant aspect of reality, to which we can then compare the claim.

And our understanding of a particular aspect of reality is our belief about that aspect.

Therefore, to conclude that a claim is true is to conclude that it agrees with our belief about the relevant aspect of reality - even if that belief was only formed immediately before coming to that conclusion.

For example, to conclude that the claim ‘Today is Monday’ is true is to conclude that it agrees with our belief about what day today is - even if that belief was only formed immediately before coming to that conclusion.

So, in order to conclude that claim X is true, we must first believe X - not the other way 'round.


That is, you formed the belief that apes and human beings loved bananas before you assessed that this claim is true - even if that belief was only formed immediately before the conclusion of that assessment.

[duszek]

All right.

How about this then:

I have no idea what apes eat. But someone working at the zoo tells me that they eat bananas. I trust him and I rely on his expert knowledge to form my new belief.

Then my assessment of the Claim is not an assessment. The belief gets created without an assessment.

[derrick.farnell]

All right.

How about this then:

I have no idea what apes eat. But someone working at the zoo tells me that they eat bananas. I trust him and I rely on his expert knowledge to form my new belief.

Then my assessment of the Claim is not an assessment. The belief gets created without an assessment.

Sorry for my delay in replying.

As I argue in the rest of the article:

https://www.tryingtothink.org/wiki/How_Belief_Works

we believe any claim upon comprehending it. Therefore, your above belief occurred before you could begin to assess the claim.

[derrick.farnell]

I've improved the wording of the second paragraph:


The content of any belief is a claim, whether it’s something profound, like ‘There’s an afterlife’, or something mundane, like ‘It's raining outside’.

Therefore, according to the common theory of belief-formation, we believe claims that we’ve assessed to be true.

But what is truth?

Although there’s disagreement within philosophy about how to define this apparently simple concept, most philosophers, regardless of which definition they support, at least agree on the following:

The claim ‘It's raining outside’, for example, is true if, and only if, it's raining outside.

More generally, claim X is true if, and only if, X.

The philosophical disagreement concerns what else, if anything, is needed for truth.

However, if the claim ‘It's raining outside’ is true if, and only if, it's raining outside, then in order to conclude that this claim is true we must first believe that it's raining outside - even if that belief was only formed immediately before coming to that conclusion.

Therefore, in order to conclude that claim X is true, we must first believe X - not the other way 'round.

[Impenitent]

and when the rain stops, your "truth" evaporates...

-Imp

[derrick.farnell]

Good news: my article has been accepted by Think.

Sincere thanks to all of you for your feedback.

I'd still appreciate any further feedback - the article is actually the first part of a bigger article that I've written, and which is available on my personal website here:

http://www.tryingtothink.org/wiki/How_Belief_Works

I now want to submit the above, minus part one, so I'd also appreciate any feedback for the rest of the above article.

[Jonathan.s]

The content of any belief is a claim, whether it’s something profound, like ‘There’s an afterlife’, or something mundane, like ‘Tomorrow is Monday’.

To conclude that a claim is true is to conclude that it agrees with reality.

The problem I see here is that these types of claims are of a radically different order. Claims about such things as 'the afterlife' are categorically different to claims such as 'tomorrow is Monday' - or even 'the Higgs Boson exists'. Why? Because with the latter two one has the possibility of finding a consensus answer (to the first question) or statistically significant evidence (in the second).

This points towards the whole issue of sythetic, analytic and empirical truths. Empirical statements concern states-of-affairs, things that happen in the world. Therefore determining that a statement of this kind 'corresponds' with something in reality is an empirical matter (e.g. 'there are no penguins in the Northern Polar regions; deciduous trees loose their leaves in autumn). Analytic truths are true by definition (i.e. 'all bachelors are unmarried'.) 'Synthetic truths' are (I think) such things as inferences on the basis of logic which predict an outcome (hence combining both logic and empirical fact.)

But truths of a metaphysical kind, such as 'there's an afterlife', are of a different order again, insofar as there is no way to arrive at the facts about them (if indeed there are any) through either empirical or analytical means. So whether a statement of that kind 'corresponds' to anything in reality is a moot point (and is in fact the very reason why logicial positivism wished to eliminate all metaphysical propositions from philosophical discourse).

So what you're proposing is actually another version of an ancient philosophical notion - the correspondence theory of truth. It sounds perfectly sensible, but as someone has already pointed out, the meaning of the word 'correspondence' is problematical in this context. As one of the philosophy text books puts it:

According to this theory (correspondence), truth consists in the agreement of our thought with reality. This view ... seems to conform rather closely to our ordinary common sense usage when we speak of truth. The flaws in the definition arise when we ask what is meant by "agreement" or "correspondence" of ideas and objects, beliefs and facts, thought and reality. In order to test the truth of an idea or belief we must presumably compare it with the reality in some sense.
1- In order to make the comparison, we must know what it is that we are comparing, namely, the belief on the one hand and the reality on the other. But if we already know the reality, why do we need to make a comparison? And if we don't know the reality, how can we make a comparison?
2- The making of the comparison is itself a fact about which we have a belief. We have to believe that the belief about the comparison is true. How do we know that our belief in this agreement is "true"? This leads to an infinite regress, leaving us with no assurance of true belief.

Randall, J. & Buchler, J.; Philosophy: An Introduction. p133

I think the reason that such an obvious idea can be challenged is that you're trying to advance a foundational claim, namely, a claim that grounds all kinds of truth claims. The problem is that 'correspondence' proceeds on the basis of the idea that there is a state of affairs there, and the perception of it, here, and that a correspondence can be established between them. In many cases, for example the case of experimental hypotheses, this can certainly be done; but if you attempt to say this is the criteria for truth, generally, then that is where we strike trouble. This is because experimental and empirical hypotheses proceed on the basis of a notion about the relationship between a proposition (theory, hypotheses, formula) and some experimental result or observation. In these kinds of cases it is not so hard to ascertain a correspondence or agreement (or lack of agreement). But when it comes to trying to articulate what truth is, it is a problem of a much more general and much deeper order.

Perhaps I have just restated what you have stated, but I think this is where the general problem lies.

[derrick.farnell]

Thanks very much Jonathan - I think I follow what you're saying.

However, the latest version of the argument (see: http://www.tryingtothink.org/wiki/How_Belief_Works) isn't committed to the correspondence theory of truth:

The content of any belief is a claim, whether it’s something profound, like ‘There’s an afterlife’, or something mundane, like ‘There's milk in the fridge’.

Therefore, according to the common theory of belief-formation, we believe claims that we’ve assessed to be true - whether they were produced by our mind as we were reasoning about something, or were comprehended by us after being produced by someone else's mind.

But what is truth?

The simplest answer is that the claim ‘There's milk in the fridge’, for example, is true if, and only if, there's milk in the fridge.

That is, claim X is true if, and only if, X.

Although there’s much disagreement within philosophy about the nature of truth, most philosophers, regardless of which theory of truth they support, at least agree on this premise.

However, if the claim ‘There's milk in the fridge’ is true if, and only if, there's milk in the fridge, then in order to conclude that this claim is true we must first believe that there's milk in the fridge - even if that belief is only formed immediately before coming to that conclusion.

Therefore, in order to conclude that claim X is true, we must first believe X - not the other way 'round.

[HexHammer]

derrick.farnell

What you say in OP doesn't make much sense imo. It doesn't account for anything, but has good rethorics and beautiful metaphors.

It doesn't account for anything in psychology. Such as psychopaths, babblehads, religious people, etc.
You should read up on cogtive abilities, naivety, jumping to conclusions, brain damage, etc.

[The Voice of Time]

Hi

I'm interested in the psychology of belief formation.

I've come-up with an argument which I believe shows that, from a logical point of view, belief can actually never be the product of an assessment of truth:

Edit: A revised version of the below has now been accepted by the popular-philosophy journal Think - please see my 13 August post.

• • The content of any belief is a claim, whether it’s something profound, like ‘There’s an afterlife’, or something mundane, like ‘Tomorrow is Monday’.
    
    To conclude that a claim is true is to conclude that it agrees with reality.
    
    Therefore, in order to conclude that a claim is true we must first have an understanding of the relevant aspect of reality, to which we can then compare the claim.
    
    However, our understanding of a particular aspect of reality is our beliefs about that aspect.
    
    That is, in order to conclude that claim X is true, we must first believe X.
    
    For example, in order to conclude that the claim ‘Tomorrow is Monday’ is true, we must first believe that tomorrow is Monday.

Not exactly, we base our decision of Monday on the preceding day, Sunday, and then compare that to the cycle "... Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday..."

If we want to figure out which day of the week it is, we must first know the past days. As such, we do not have a belief of the day today, but in another abstract system for which we instantiate our day today from.

Also, our "understanding of a particular aspect of reality" is not our belief about that aspect, but a collection of information from which we can create a solid body of knowledge that makes out our belief, however, in the case of incomplete information, such as the day today, we live in doubt, and doubt is not belief but its antagonist, and the antagonist is defeated when belief is solidified by, in this case, the inference from the abstract system.